Red Nightcap: Nightminds Remix
by MerriWyllow
Summary: Written for Paint-It-Red's Remix Challenge, based on Tromana's "Nightminds". Crossover with Discworld. Spoilers for The Mentalist through 4.01. No particular Discworld spoilers. "That was Malibu for you. Other small towns in America, neighbors brought casseroles for a new widower. Here they brought Schedule IV Controlled Substances."


**Author's Note: ** Written for Paint-It-Red's Remix Challenge, based on Tromana's "Nightminds". Crossover with Discworld. Spoilers for The Mentalist through 4.01. No particular Discworld spoilers.

**Disclaimer: **I own so very little here, just a handful of original characters. I don't even own the idea for the plot. I certainly do not own either Discworld or The Mentalist or their regular inhabitants. No harm to either universe is intended, and I certainly shall take away no profit other than my own satisfaction.

* * *

Long before the coroner's vehicle carried away the victims, EMTs assessed Patrick Jane for shock. Dr. Hansen from up the beach saved him the trip to the Emergency Room by calling in a prescription for a sedative to CVS. Her husband graciously picked it up for him.

That was Malibu for you. Other small towns in America, neighbors brought casseroles for a new widower. Here they brought Schedule IV Controlled Substances.

The police were keeping him out of his house. One of them thoughtfully obtained a couple changes of clothing so he could go elsewhere for the night. Then they cordoned off the doors with yellow tape.

Following the good doctor's instructions Mr. Hansen delivered him to Aunty Bess's B&B. Dr. Hansen had called ahead to ensure there was a room for him.

Bess plied him with herbal tea laced with brandy, that old fashioned cure-all for everything from bronchitis to heartbreak to teething babies (nowadays just for the parents - rubbing brandy into babies' gums has long since gone the way of leaches and laudanum) and had the courtesy to believe his answer when she asked if he wanted innocuous chatter about nothing for company or if he had had enough noise. He sat alone in the parlor, drinking his tea.

She had no intention of simply leaving him there. She breezed through the room occasionally, filling up his tea cup, leaving the bottle of brandy. A long-haired orange marmalade cat came and sat on the back of the couch just out of arm's reach. He could hear nothing from the cat, but he could see its guard hairs vibrating.

On one trip through the parlor, Bess noticed.

"Is Terry bothering you?"

"No, not at all. She's purring," he said.

"She sat with me like this once. You are only the second person I have ever seen her brave enough to stay in the same room with on first meeting. The first was my husband, rest his soul. He was the one who climbed a ladder to get her out of the tree she was stuck in, so it stands to reason she trusted him. I mostly see her at mealtimes and when I'm sick. She usually takes her own sweet time getting to know strangers." Bess left the room again, leaving him to Terry's care.

Time passed. Between the sedative and the brandy, his internal clock was not keeping track of how swiftly or slowly it flowed. He could no longer tell if it was before or after midnight. There was a decorative clock on the mantlepiece, but he had no idea if the thing was uninformative by nature or if he was simply not registering the information to be gleaned from looking at it.

Patrick Jane felt dangerously detached. The truth, he supposed, was that he had been separated from this life the moment his wife and daughter died. He just had not known it yet. He began to become aware of it when he found them. The pain was now so great he expected it to stop his heart from beating. He craved to cease breathing - not hold his breath, but to simply never draw one again. The rational reaction to his situation, he knew, was to scream until sanity fled in fear, but the Ativan was stopping that. It was the brandy that woke him up to the sensation of being unattached, untethered, unglued from life. Death had scythed his family, and he had been winnowed from them.

He heard a skittering from a corner. A rat came into view. It surprised him greatly; Bess was no slattern. The rat appeared to be far from healthy. One might even have described it as skeletal.

Terry, after the manner of her kind, gathered herself up and made ready to pounce. The rat turned to the cat and said the word SQUEAK.

Terry growled low but did not move.

SQUEAK.

He saw a tall, thin, dark-robed figure enter the room and approach Terry.

I APOLOGIZE. I DID TRY TO TELL HIM NOT TO COME.

The cat very earnestly replied, "Mmow."

The rat skittered its way next to the man. He reached out a bony hand to skritch Terry's neck, and she eagerly stretched to rub her head into the hand. She then settled down again in catloaf position rather nearer to Patrick Jane than she had started the evening.

The newcomer's voice, Patrick noticed, was not entirely unlike the TARDIS landing with emergency brakes on, though the sound somehow flattened into no dimension at all. He heard the tall fellow say YOU ARE KIND TO SIT WITH HIM.

Terry replied, "Mrrt."

I CAN SEE IT HAS NOTHING AT ALL TO DO WITH THE CATNIP TEA, he said.

"Mrrrt."

YES. THAT SPIRIT MIGHT BE TOO MUCH TAKEN WITH THE OTHER POTION FOR BESS. SHE WAS IN SOME DANGER THEN. HE IS NOT.

"Mrrrrow."

The conversation he was witnessing would have concerned him less had the cat been responding in English. The possibility that this was no hallucination brought on by untoward drug interactions disquieted Patrick far more than the possibility that he had had too much of something or other. The idea that perhaps a little more might be just the thing tickled a small spot on the inside of his brain. The other fellow was difficult to look at, difficult to see. He very much did not want to look at him, or to see him. But a man simply sliding away sideways out of his notice was not the kind of thing Patrick Jane permitted. He made himself notice. He made himself see in a detached way. Perhaps the detached manner of seeing was the only way it could have been accomplished.

"Dr. Hansen warned me about combining Ativan with alcohol." Would a hallucination of an anthropomorphic personification of the force which had cut him off from his family be so difficult to attend to? Patrick did not know. He was unable decide if he believed in the existence of DEATH or if he believed he was losing his mind.

I HAVE OBSERVED THAT WIZARDS OFTEN DISREGARD THE WARNINGS GIVEN THEM.

"Wizard?"

ARE YOU NOT A WIZARD? YOU CAN SEE ME.

"There's no such thing as wizards. Or psychics, for that matter. And if there were wizards, I wouldn't be one."

AH YES, PSYCHIC IS WHAT YOU CALL YOURSELF. WHERE I USUALLY WORK THE FIRST THING WIZARDS LEARN IS TO PAY ATTENTION TO THINGS MOST PEOPLE DO NOT LET THEMSELVES SEE. THAT IS A SKILL YOU HAVE MASTERED WELL ENOUGH.

"Are you here for me?"

NO, MR. JANE. I AM ON WHAT YOU MIGHT CALL A HOLIDAY.

"My wife and daughter just died, I should be with them. What kind of holiday is that? Finish the job."

IT IS COMPLICATED. I AM SORRY BUT I DO NOT WORK HERE. IT IS DIFFERENT HERE. AND IT IS NOT YOUR TIME.

"If you don't work here, how do you know it isn't my time?"

LET US JUST SAY, YOU ARE NOT THE ONLY ONE WITH GIFTS.

"Oh really?"

YES. YOU HAVE MUCH MORE LEFT TO LIVE FOR. I ADVISE YOU DO NOT THROW THIS SECOND CHANCE AWAY.

Patrick Jane got up. Any reason to live sounded too much like a threat to him. He picked up the cat on the impulse that he would sooner die than leave Terry to face something he himself feared. Then he stalked out of the room in mingled disgust and despair. Terry strained away from him, but he held on to her until he reached his room, well aware of the dreadful ironic silliness of his protective urges in light of his catastrophic failure to shield his wife and child.

Letting her jump out of his arms, he said, "Sorry, cat. I didn't want to leave you in there with that... whatever that was." He did not quite remember now why it had been so important to leave the parlor. Now that he was in his room, Patrick felt his mind slowing down to as close to a full stop as it could get. He did not bother undressing or even getting under the covers. He barely took the moment to take his shoes off before lying down. His eyes closed of their own accord. It might not be sleep between the chemical influences but his mind was no longer truly awake either. Terry got up and slept next to his feet.

* * *

The tall fellow and his four-legged companion had made their way to the kitchen. On the floor the bony rat sampled the dry food in the cat's dish.

SQUEAK.

NO, I DO NOT SUPPOSE HE WILL REMEMBER MY ADVICE WHEN THE TIME COMES. In fact, Death remembered quite well that Patrick Jane would end up in the hospital following a suicide attempt, and some years later would end up being tried for murder of a man who was most certainly not the serial killer who killed Angela and Charlotte Jane. Patrick would do and say a number of other puzzling, not to say foolish, things in the time ahead of him. But he would love again - not a whole-hearted love such as he knew with his wife; but cracked broken and ground to bits as it was, his heart would be cemented back together in surprising ways. The love he found would be a broader, wilder love because it would enfold people who were not naturally his friend, kin or bedmate. He might never master the art of loving his enemies, but he would come so far in the path of virtue as to be able to sometimes give love to strangers.

SQUEAK. The Rat looked up from the cat's dish.

NO, I DON'T KNOW WHY THE HUMANS HERE DO NOT GIVE THEIR CATS RODENT-FLAVORED FOOD. BUT IT SEEMS A LITTLE MORBID THAT YOU ASKED, Death said.

SQUEAK?

NO, YOU MAY NOT TAKE THE KIBBLE WITH YOU. COME ALONG, NOW.

Three more pieces of cat food disappeared. And so Death and the Death of Rats exited this reality.


End file.
